Jeremiah 25:34 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Jeremiah 25:34
Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock: for the days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished; and ye shall fall like a pleasant vessel.
to howl (with a wailing tone) or yell (with a boisterou… · verb, hiphil imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
shepherds
הָרֹעִ֜יםha.ro.'Im
H7462
to tend a flock · definite article + verb, qal active participle, masculine plural absolute
cry
וְזַעֲק֗וּve.za.'a.Ku
H2199
to shriek (from anguish or danger) · conjunction + verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
wallow
וְהִֽתְפַּלְּשׁוּ֙ve.hit.pa.le.Shu
H6428
to roll (in dust) · conjunction + verb, hithpael imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
principal
אַדִּירֵ֣י'a.di.Rei
H117
wide or (generally) large · adjective, masculine plural construct
flock
הַצֹּ֔אןha.Tzon
H6629
a collective name for a flock (of sheep or goats) · definite article + noun, common both genders singular absolute
days
יְמֵיכֶ֖םye.mei.Khem
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine plural
slaughter
לִטְב֑וֹחַlit.Vo.ach
H2873
to slaughter (animals or men) · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
dispersions
וּתְפוֹצ֣וֹתִיכֶ֔םu.te.fo.Tzo.ti.Khem
H8600
a dispersal · conjunction + noun, common feminine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine plural
accomplished
מָלְא֥וּmal.'U
H4390
to fill or (intransitively) be full of · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
fall
וּנְפַלְתֶּ֖םu.ne.fal.Tem
H5307
to fall · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine plural
pleasant
חֶמְדָּֽהchem.Dah
H2532
delight · noun, common feminine singular absolute
vessel
כִּכְלִ֥יkikh.Li
H3627
something prepared · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Jeremiah 6:26 O daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee mourning, as for an only son, most bitter lamentat…
2 Chronicles 36:10 And when the year was expired, king Nebuchadnezzar sent, and brought him to Babylon, with the goodly vessels of the house of the LORD, and m…
Psalms 2:9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
Isaiah 2:16 And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.
Isaiah 10:12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit…
Isaiah 30:14 And he shall break it as the breaking of the potters’ vessel that is broken in pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not be found…
Isaiah 33:1 Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! when thou shalt…
Isaiah 34:6 The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 25:30–end
We have, in these verses, a further description of those terrible desolations which the king of Babylon with his armies should make in all the countries and nations round about Jerusalem. In Jerusalem God had erected his temple; there were his oracles and ordinances, which the neighbouring nations should have attended to and might have received benefit by; thither they should have applied for the knowledge of God and their duty, and then they might have had reason to bless God for their neighbourhood to Jerusalem; but they, instead of that, taking all opportunities either to debauch or to disturb that holy city, when God came to reckon with Jerusalem because it learned so much of the way of…
shepherds--princes (Jer 22:22). Here he returns to the Jews and their rulers, using the same image as in Jer 25:30, "pasture" (see on Jer 25:30).
wallow yourselves--Cover yourselves as thickly with ashes, in token of sorrow, as one who rolls in them (Jer 6:26; Eze 27:30) [MAURER].
principal--leaders. The Septuagint translates "rams," carrying out the image (compare Isa 14:9, Margin; Zac 10:3).
days of your slaughter . . . of . . . dispersions--rather, "your days for slaughter (that is, the time of your being slain), and your dispersions (not 'of your dispersions'), are accomplished (are come)."
pleasant vessel--Ye were once a precious vessel, but ye shall fall, and so be a broken ves…
Howl, ye shepherds, and cry,.... The Targum is,
"howl, ye kings, and cry;''
and the rulers and governors of the nations before threatened with destruction are meant; who are here called upon to lamentation and mourning for the ruin and loss of their kingdoms; though Calvin thinks that this is an apostrophe to the Jewish nation, and the rulers of it. It is no uncommon thing in Scripture to call kings and civil magistrates shepherds; see Jeremiah 23:1;
and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock; or "roll yourselves in dust", as a token of mourning; as being in the utmost distress, and incapable of helping themselves, and redressing the grievances of their people; and ther…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 34, 35.) Howl (or rejoice) you shepherds, and shout, and sprinkle yourselves with ashes, you noble flock (or lament, you rams of the sheep); for your days are fulfilled that you may be slain, and your dispersions, and you shall fall like precious vessels (or like chosen rams). And flight shall perish from the shepherds, and salvation from the noble ones (or rams) of the flock. It should be noted that only in this place have the Seventy interpreted 'jubilum' in a negative sense: for which reason other interpreters have translated it as 'howl' (as it is written in Hebrew). Between shepherds and rams, or leaders of the flock, there is this distinction: the shepherds are rational beings; but the rams and leaders are referred to the wealthy, who themselves are also called part of the flock. And it brings forth: Your days are complete, that you may be killed: then their days shall be completed, when their sins are fulfilled; and they shall be scattered and fall, like precious vessels, so that when broken they cannot be restored; and the more precious they were before, the greater the damage in their breaking; or like chosen rams, desiring to devour a fat sacrifice. He says that the flight of the shepherds will perish when they do not repent. Finally, it is said to the Pharisees: Offspring of vipers, who has shown you how to escape from the coming wrath (Luke 5:7)? And in the Psalms we read: The flight has perished from me (Psalm 141:5). And salvation, he says, from the best of the flock, or from the rams: in common, it is understood that it will perish.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Captivity — (1.) Of Israel. The kingdom of the ten tribes was successively invaded by several Assyrian kings. Pul (q.v.) imposed a tribute on Menahem of a thousand talents of silver (2 Kings 15:19, 20; 1 Chr.…
Jeremiah, Book of — Consists of twenty-three separate and independent sections, arranged in five books. I. The introduction, ch. 1. II. Reproofs of the sins of the Jews, consisting of seven sections, (1.) ch. 2; (2.)…
Shepherd — A word naturally of frequent occurence in Scripture. Sometimes the word “pastor” is used instead (Jer. 2:8; 3:15; 10:21; 12:10; 17:16). This word is used figuratively to represent the relation of…
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Jeremiah 25:34
34. Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock: for the days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished; and ye shall fall like a pleasant vessel.
34. Ulalate pastores, et clamate, et volutate vos eximii gregis; quia impleti sunt dies vestri ad mactandum, et dispersiones vestrae (vel, afflictiones, confractiones;) et cadetis tanquam vas desiderii (id est, pretiosum.)
I doubt not but that the Prophet now turns his discourse especially to his own nation, which interpreters have not observed, and hence have not understood the meaning of the Prophet. He prophesied of God's judgments, that the Jews might know that t…
"But do thou prophesy to them all these words, and say unto them: Jahveh will roar from on high, and from His holy habitation let His voice resound; He will roar against His pasture, raise a shout like treaders of grapes against all the inhabitants of the earth. Jer 25:31. Noise reacheth to the end of the earth, for controversy hath Jahveh with the nations; contend will He with all flesh; the wicked He gives to the sword, is the saying of Jahveh. Jer 25:32. Thus saith Jahveh of hosts: Behold, evil goeth forth from nation to nation, and (a) great storm shall raise itself from the utmost coasts of the earth. Jer 25:33. And the slain of Jahveh shall lie on that day from one end of the earth unt…
The earth’s evil shepherds were vicious tyrants who ruled the nations. • Roll in the dust: A sign of distress.
Rashi on Jeremiah 25:34
Howl an expression of יְלָלָה, howling.
and roll i.e., roll in the dust (se vautrer in French).
and your scatterings This is a short verse; i.e., to say: and your scatterings shall come near.
like a precious vessel That is to say: If you say, “We are important,” there are many precious glass vessels that fall, break, and are lost.
